What makes a great dungeon?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Knutplate, May 9, 2013.

  1. Explicit Augur

    Chelsith and Shadow on launch were a pretty great example of how terrible this would end up becoming =/
    Falos and Kelefane like this.
  2. Qest T. Silverclaw Augur

    I used to love crawling through Tower of Frozen Shadows in an evening, getting to the top, and camping the phat lewtz for my friends. It was great! The new monster mission isn't very nostalgic as the players are completely overpowered. We need a difficulty slider so I can turn it up!
  3. moogs Augur

    I remember zoning into some LDoNs and having the group wipe the moment the first door was opened. Man, did that suck. But it's a dungeon. Bring on the pain.
  4. Kyzarvs New Member

    You need to have a sense of achievement no matter where you are in the dungeon - progressively harder mobs as you go in for sure, but also some decent RvR for the entrance mobs. Seb is the perfect dungeon, Chardok was good, Sirens' Grotto was pretty good as well. Also must be worth a mention, Blackburrow was a superb newbie-journey, great rewards everywhere with gnoll fangs, but getting to the green room was a real achievement, holding it was really special.
  5. Gnomeland Augur

    Every MMO after EQ has gone the instance crawl route of dungeon design. I wonder whether people who express their preference over this style are doing so because it's rare in EQ, because personally I've had my share of both WoW and Rift - and ALL the dungeons in both of those games are instance crawls with currency - and it got old, and I found myself back in EQ. Instance crawls are nice the first few times you do them, but ultimately they become very, very repetitive, and the only difference between them and camping becomes that you have to spend greater effort clearing trash in the former due to the linear, no trash skipping design used by instance crawling MMOs.

    Now randomization, that's a different topic. Randomization sounds great on paper, but technology wise there's a pretty large trade off between dungeon quality and randomization in today's games. Randomized with today's technology = generic, and this was the case for all the LDoNs - the mobs were generic, the tunnels were generic, the traps were generic, and the bosses were generic. In the end you have a generic instance crawl which on paper changes each time you play, but practically speaking the change just amounted to figuring out which tunnel to go down to finish the instance in the fastest way, which before people figured out all the maps SoE used for each LDoN theme, was a trial and error process that was frustrating to the extreme when you went down the wrong tunnel and was not able to finish the instance in time because of it.

    In short, I don't understand people calling for LDoN style dungeons, and I ask those people who favor instance crawls why they aren't playing WoW, Rift, and the dozens of other MMOs designed around them.
  6. Qest T. Silverclaw Augur

    I play an Enchanter and my wife plays a Monk. Where can we go that has both of those classes? Besides, WoW was oversimplified. We tried Rift too, but didn't like it.
  7. Knutplate Lorekeeper

    Nothing says we can only have one type of dungeon.

    As long as the rewards corresponding to a more difficult experience are exclusive - people will go. If the same reward is offered for varying levels of difficulty, then people will flow to the path of least resistance.

    Go back to the Omens of War trials... those were difficult for even raiders, but there was no shortage of groups making the effort to get those rewards.

    An entire expansion doesn't have to pander to the common denominator of average players. I think its perfectly reasonable that there be at least one zone per expansion that aspires to challenge players at all levels.

    To quote another player's post: At what point do the dev's tell an average player - hey, tools exist for you to survive in a more challenging environment - It's now up to you to obtain them and perform at a high enough level to succeed.

    I'd like to see the pendulum swing back a little towards requiring at east *some* content to be approached cautiously and thoughtfully.
  8. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I think the most important thing for the devs to remember when reading this thread is that generally they won't be getting comments from the average run of the mill players here. I wish there was a way other then in game polls (which are rather limited in the info they offer) to get more opinions from the averae run of the mill player.